In the middle of the '70s the boss of Apple Allen Klein financed the follow-up movie of Alejandro Jodorowsky's "El Topo" on the advice of John Lennon: "The Holy Mountain". It became an odd and grotesque nightmare full of bizarre episodes, satirical polemic and a steady noticeable fight of surrealism and realism, both in content and visual aspects. Today this masterstroke's still powerful and enlightening - if you get to see it. After some disputes between Klein and Jodorowsky, Klein decided to artistically destroy his new arch enemy by locking away the master tapes and by not granting any publications. So just a few countries could release this classic officially, for example Japan and Italy. The Japanese master tapes were blurred because of the Japanese censorship, the genitals of naked men and women were overlaid with white fog. But the Italian prints were even more censored. With the release of the Italian DVD under Raro Video most of the censorship cuts were reconstructed, but the film was still incomplete. You have to accept two obvious violence censorship cuts and some cuts caused by damages to the master tape in this version. This DVD was compared to the latest release of the movie, the Japanese DVD which is completely uncut but blurred.
Runtime Uncut version: 113 minutes, 17 seconds. (NTSC)
Runtime Italian version: 112 minutes, 2 seconds. (NTSC)
Missing in total: one minute and 5 seconds with 7 alterations.

53:55Sel from the planet Saturn introduces herself. Voice-over: "My name is Sel. My planet is Saturn. My customers are children". In addition we can see the "Sel Foundation" building and a horde of children standing in front of it. ( 9 seconds )

84:05A monkey is eating from a bowl. A girl comes by, hugs the animal, sits down beside it and eats from the bowl too. ( 10 seconds )

100:54After Sel is ordered to rub her clitoris against the mountain to devote herself to the world so that she isn't afraid of the spiritual success anymore, there's missing how she rubs her pelvis to the boulder while she's moaning. ( 17 seconds )

102:07Fon's fingers get cut off so that he concentrates less on his body, thus on his frostbitten fingers. ( 1 second )

105:20The castration scene is missing. This scene can't be seen in the Japanese version due to the blurring censorship (as shown in the picture). There's no runtime difference because the prior image (of the screaming man) was just slowed down in the Italian version. ( no difference )

107:15The alchemist points to the immortals on the top of the mountain. ( 2 seconds )

113:09After the end credits: sign of the MPAA, it says that the film is R-rated. ( 8 seconds )